Lorne Gunter writes on Global Warming

This short column by Lorne Gunter nicely outlines the body of evidence that has accumulated against the ongoing continuance of rising global temperatures. Global temperatures do clearly fluctuate and we are still experiencing a period of increased heat in the Northern Hemisphere which continues to defy satisfactory explanation unless one wishes to argue that the slight increase in CO2 content is better at allowing the atmosphere to retain heat in the face of declining energy input.

The chart tracks temperature in the troposphere and is thought to be good proxy for solar energy input because of its apparent stability. Thus the sharp lift in 1998 is very noteworthy since it suggests that we had a strong input of extra heat that year that was unprecedented. At least this bit of evidence suggests that. If the atmosphere was in fact heated up, then we have an explanation for the succeeding warm climate in the Northern Hemisphere. What impresses me is how little we noticed.

This all suggests that we should expect a fairly significant cooling cycle, except if you look at the chart and actually expect it to be an indicator, you will observe that the present low has only now dropped below the line previously set as a good zero. It spent the past decade firmly well over that line and real lows occurred only back in 1992 and before. In fact this chart very nicely confirms that by and large it has been warmer for a decade and that it has not actually fallen back to the historic trend line or medium.

We do not understand why the troposphere warmed up and stayed that way. But we do understand that this is surely linked to the clear evidence of surplus heat flowing into the Arctic. It may now cool off but I would not count on this at all. The solar cooling that is perhaps affecting this may only be good enough to give us the present bottom which is simply not low enough.

The chart actually shows that there is normally a rapid decline followed by an upward trending recovery of the temperature. We just had the rapid decline which I expect will not be continued into next year. In that case the sea ice removal program is well on the way for the next five years.

This once again shows why CO2 emissions should not be linked to global warming over which we have little or no control or reliable understanding.

The mission of our generation is to replace fossil fuels from the energy equation and to manufacture soils throughout the globe by converting CO2 into biochar and stop wasting our energies second guessing the weather. The Holocene is maturing very nicely and is proving to be as stable as a rock.

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.

Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."

While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.

For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ... cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

Moreover, while the chart below was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.

It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn't any global warming.